Early Modern World

Karen Kramer HAA198G

I selected three artworks that demonstrate the theme of trans-ocean voyages in the Early Modern World, created by Makers in Africa, China, and the Aleutian Islands (in what is now a part of Alaska, United States). Each underscores trade and exchange, and how the ocean transformed the social and economic landscapes of these regions.

During the second half of the 15th century, journeys of exploration brought Portuguese navigators into direct contact with cultures of western Africa and by the 16th century, Benin (now Nigeria) was trading pepper, gum, cloth, ivory and slaves with the Portuguese in exchange for brass, lead, iron, coral, cowrie shells (used for currency), firearms, spirits and luxury goods. Artists expressed the growing relationships between Africa and Europe through material culture, including this 16th-century saltcellar made in the royal workshops for the European market. This intricately rendered ivory saltcellar is a three-dimensional portrait of four Portuguese men. Two wealthy men, facing outward, wear high-status clothing, including: a patterned high-crowned hat with a feathered brim, knee britches, a buttoned doublet with flaring shoulders and sleeves and bodice, keys, crosses, swords, and spears. Their attendants, carved in less detail, are in profile. Four almost identical saltcellars exist in museum collections around the world; scholars have suggested that the four were intended as a set, perhaps as a gift for a patron's table.

Farther north from West Africa and Portugal, in the late 17th century, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) expanded trade from spices to Indian cotton, Chinese porcelain, and Japanese lacquer to a growing wealthy class in the Netherlands. The intersection of trade with Asia and the VOC helped create the modern age of capitalism, and objects created for this clientele reflect the interplay between Eastern and Western cultures, of which this sweetmeat set is a particularly apt example. Set in the form of a flower composed of a central star-shaped dish surrounded by eight matching petal-shaped dishes, the shield at center reveals an elaborate coat of arms of Johannes van Camphuys, Governor General of the VOC in Batavia from 1641-1691. This is believed to be the earliest Chinese armorial enameled porcelain ordered by a VOC commissioner.

The third object is a three-piece ensemble, a hooded shirt, an outer cape, and a pair of pants, made by an Unangax maker in the Aleutian Islands, collected in Hawai’i and conveyed to the East India Marine Society Museum around 1821 by Salem-based sea captain, Thomas Meek. Thomas, with his brother John, traded between the Pacific Northwest Coast, Hawai’i and China for nearly two decades in the early 19th century. The ensemble is made of sea lion intestine strips, sewn together with sea grasses, rendering the garments entirely waterproof. The cape follows the style of a Russian naval officer’s cape, or kamleika, and the anorak is the style worn by Unangan hunters in their ocean-going kayaks.The pants, now too deteriorated for display, are in the style of western sailor pants. This was originally catalogued as the “Royal Robe of Tamahama, King of the Sandwich Islands...” Tamahama was the man we know today as Kamehameha, King and unifier of the Hawaiian islands in the late 18th century. Presumably, this was commissioned for the king specifically. and had “easy access to Kamehameha in business and leisure and they mediated for missionaries and other merchants.”(1) The King projected his power and status through worldly objects he collected. That he gifted this parka, cape, and pants to Meek points to their

multifaceted personal relationship and shows the symbolic importance of textiles in global exchange.(2)

(1) Christina Hellmich. “Cosmopolitan Relationships in the Crossroads of the Pacific Ocean,” in Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello, Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

(2) Ibid.